Someone Is On Your Side

In the second act of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Into the Woods, the four remaining lead characters – the Baker, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack – come together to sing the show’s penultimate number called No One Is Alone. After the long, arduous journey they’ve been on, each one having experienced tremendous heartache, they try to understand the consequences of the things for which they have wished throughout the show, and they begin to decide to place community wishes over their own. The song itself serves a dual purpose: first, to show that each of the characters’ actions – and by extension our own – are not made in a bubble and that no one is guaranteed to be the protagonist of their own story. And second, and I would say most importantly, the song demonstrates that even when life throws its greatest challenges at us, we do not have to face them alone, that there are still people who love us, believe in us, and are cheering for us.

No One Is Alone, from the final act of Into the Woods.

I would add, even when we cannot see them. For that is what the Feast of All Saints is about, the companions we have had along our journey through the woods of our own lives, those who showed us the way, who may have gone on to glory, but whose lessons, whose love, whose spirits live on and inspire us to keep going and remember, to borrow the last line of that song: things will come out right now/we can make it so/someone is on your side/no one is alone.

Most of y’all, I suspect, are familiar with the Paschal Triduum, which are the three sacred days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. They are the holiest days in the Christian calendar, marking Jesus’ passing over from death to life. This springtime Triduum of life is mirrored by a Triduum of death in the fall of All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day, which happen in each on October 31, November 1, and November 2, respectively. All Hallows Eve was the day when Christians remembered that death doesn’t have the final say, and thus is not something to be feared, so they dressed up and mocked demons and devils to their faces. All Saints marked the celebration of the apostles and martyrs, confessors and doctors of the church, the big deal folks who have stained glass in their honor and stuff named for them. All Souls, then, was the day to remember everyone else, all the faithful departed. Over time, though, and because All Saints is one of the few major feast days we can move to the following Sunday, All Saints and All Souls got conflated and merged together, while All Hallows Eve became a purely secular holiday that a lot of Christians even openly opposed. 

Which is where we found ourselves this past Sunday. All Saints Sunday is not just about remembering folks like James the Greater, for whom this church is named, but all those who we love but see no longer. Personally, this day takes me back to little All Saints Episcopal Church in Norton, VA, a place where the directory is the front and back of one sheet of paper. This place baptized me – along with my mother and sister, the only triple baptism in their history – confirmed me, and ordained me – and later my dad. And while they didn’t have a staff or lot of programs, they have lived into their name. Saints that have worshiped there included Joe and May Straughn, who sang in the choir. Frances Herndon, the faithful altar guild chair who insisted I preach her funeral even before I was ordained. The Rev. Fran McCoy, the priest responsible for me even being here today. And my mother, Susan Mitchell, who I still see in the second pew on the right in every place I preach. They are just some of the saints, the companions on the way, the ones who reminded me and many others that none of us is alone.

My mother and me after my first mass as a priest at All Saints in Norton, VA (June, 2013)

And that is what the saints truly are to us, our companions. That word is taken from the Latin com, meaning “together or with,” and pan, meaning “bread.” Our companions are literally the ones with whom we share bread. And just as your closest companions are the ones you invite to share bread at your dinner table, at the eucharistic Table that is the altar of God, Christ brings us together – he who himself is the bread of life, the bread of heaven, the bread that feeds and sustains us . We share that Bread with each other, yes, but when we come to the rail and reach out our hands we do not do it alone. None of us is alone. The heavenly banquet that we know our loved ones are sharing right now is nothing less than the Eucharist itself. In the great prayer of the Church we hear Jesus’ words to his apostles, echoed through eternity for all the saints, “Do this for the remembrance of me.”  Remember.  We do not partake in this holy meal to simply recall an event in history, no.  We re-member; that is, we become a member again, we reconnect with Christ and with all the saints who partake in this communion, we reaffirm our place in the communion of saints by the communion of Christ’s own body and blood.  With those words of his, the lid is blown off of time.  The past is brought into the present, and the eternal is now.  We are tied to all who have ever offered this prayer before us, bound together with all throughout history who have shared the Bread and Cup.  We are united through the future to the heavenly banquet, where the feasting never ends.  In the midst of that celebrating, while moving beyond time, we are joined by the saints of God at this very rail, kneeling – or standing - beside us.  Our fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters, grandparents, grandchildren, and dear friends.  They are here.  We will name them shortly, and soon and very soon, we will share with them in what Saint Ignatius of Antioch called “the medicine of immortality.”

No one is alone. Salvation is not something we achieve on our own – contrary to popular opinion, we do not go out and “get saved” by ourselves. We pray, we break bread, we study, we grow, we fail, we fall, we repent, we forgive, and we keep moving closer and closer to salvation together. The lives of the saints remind us of that fact. They remind us that no one is alone.  

It is into this promise today that we baptized Brooks Matthew Binga at St. James in Skaneateles on Sunday. The Feast of All Saints has always been one of the Church’s principle baptism days. It connects the living to the dead and the assurance that, as members of the Body of Christ, our bond with them can never be broken. Brooks now has taken his place today as part of that great cloud of witnesses, and everyone in the parish promised to uphold him in his life in Christ. We baptized him into the same baptism for the forgiveness of sins as his ancestors, but not because he has sinned but so that he will know the promise of forgiveness whenever he does fall – which he will, like all of us. All Saints Sunday is the Church’s chance to let Brooks and all those joining the Body of Christ through the baptismal waters know that they will never be alone. And as we were all splashed with those same holy waters through which we have been redeemed, we remember that promise for ourselves, our connection to one another, to the saints, to the assurance that none of us is alone on this journey toward salvation.

Sometimes I’m asked why we Episcopalians pray for the dead; after all, they’re fine now because they’re with God. There’s two reasons, really: 1) to remember that, as the prayer says, in death life is changed, not ended, and that those we love are still alive in the presence of God, and 2) because they are praying for us. On that side of the Kingdom is the Church Triumphant, those who have finished their earthly course and have found their triumph with Christ, and it is their ministry to pray for us here in the Church Militant – a term we use for us here on earth who are still in our struggles. We pray for them because that relationship is not over because it rooted in love, which is the very nature of God. I am fond of reminding folks that love is the most powerful force in the whole universe, it cannot be destroyed by time or space. Love never dies. Love is what unites us, the living to the dead, and reminds us that we are not alone.

For all the saints, who from their labors rest, who thee by faith before the world confessed, thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blest. And let the church forever say: Alleluia! And Amen.